


The Shirt Off Her Back

by noandpickles



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Backstory, Blood and Gore, Gambling, Major Character Injury, Waterdeep, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29103864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noandpickles/pseuds/noandpickles
Summary: Plim, a young tortle born in northern Faerûn, has made her way to Waterdeep to find her big break. But her gambling habit gets out of control, and she winds up in debt to an unsavory figure named Glesrik Stonesoul. He offers her a way out, but it might not be worth the risk.





	The Shirt Off Her Back

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is comprised of the backstory of my D&D character, Plim. Hopefully the story is still interesting and compelling to people who aren't involved in that campaign.
> 
> DO NOT READ THIS if you don't want graphic descriptions of severe, extensive, and deliberate physical trauma.

Plim craned her neck back to gaze up at the towering walls of Waterdeep, nearly retracting her head into her shell in the effort to sight the top of the structure before her. The wall cast a deeper, cooler shade than any of the trees or hills the caravan had passed on this last leg of its voyage. Plim shuddered with the sudden chill, and for the first time since crossing the Spine of the World, she wished for the warm furs she had used to drape over her shell. Tortles tended to use clothing for decoration only, relying on their shells for warmth and protection. But no one survived twenty winters in Icewind Dale without adapting.

She shook her head, bringing herself back to the present. Retracting her neck a bit further into the warmth of her shell, she left the caravan's encampment for the gates, determined to leave her frigid memories behind in the warm Waterdhavian sun.

* * *

The sun beat down on the men and women trudging along Dock Street. Every one of the dozen ships in port needed cargo hauled off and provisions hauled on, and even in the most magical city in the world, it was always down to a strong back and an empty purse to get the real work done. Plim was floating on her back in the harbor, keeping herself from drifting away with a rope tied to an unused mooring. At this time of day, she should be hauling crates right along with all those poor bastards above her. But the dice had been kind last night, and she'd taken the afternoon off to relax.

The heat was intense, and her black scales soaked up nearly all of it. Her parents had joked that she must have hatched with that intensely dark color because her egg knew she'd need all the help she could get staying warm in the Dale. She wondered slowly if they were right, her mind tracing the thought lazily with no intention of getting from it to any other anytime soon.

_Splish_

The sound of a pebble striking the water near her head interrupted her almost nap, but she kept her eyes closed and her face neutral. "Fuck off, Shira," she muttered, just loud enough to be heard from the dock above.

"Oi! Whaddya think you're doing, you useless lout?" Her friend's voice betrayed the smile she must be wearing.

"What does it look like? I'm sleeping off the amazing date I had last night!" Plim stretched her limbs, casually swirling her hands in the warm water.

Another pebble splashed down, this one narrowly missing Plim's knee. "Oh? And what's his name this time?"

"Same as last time," Plim couldn't help but grin. Shira seemed so sure this joke could never get old. Maybe she was right. " _Her_ name is Lady Luck, and I must've been the only ass in that place she hadn't fucked when the night was over."

"See, most people wouldn't call it an amazing date when their girl fucked everyone but them, ya weirdo." A pebble bounced off of Plim's armored chest scales before sinking into the harbor.

"Hey, watch where you're-" she started to say, opening her eyes just in time to see a flash of red skin, black hair, and maroon horns as Shira splashed down right next to her, sending a wave of seawater directly into Plim's face. She struggled to right herself and started treading water, which Shira was _not_ helping with by hanging on her back with her arms around Plim's neck like a toddler.

The brawny tiefling gave Plim a peck on the cheek and laughed cheerfully as Plim tried to pull them both over to the ladder. "Why don't you spread your luck around a little? I'd say you owe me a drink!"

"Fuck you, fuckin' devilspawn."

Shira kissed her cheek again. "Aww, I love you too, Plim."

* * *

A crossbow bolt struck Plim square in the chest. She glanced down as the dart clattered uselessly to the floor, then locked onto the wide eyes of the man cowering before her. He was short for a human, not quite five feet tall. Plim would've stood head and shoulders above him even if he weren't half crouched in the corner of his cramped office. She hefted a mace in her right hand and a hand axe in her left, considering the flanges of her weapon in the dim candlelight.

"You know why I'm here." She probably should've taken the crossbow from him. But his hands were shaking too hard to load another bolt even if he tried, and she was feeling lucky after that first bolt had failed to find a weak spot in her scales.

The man stammered, trying and failing to produce anything approaching Common.

"Look, you don't like Glesrik. I get it. Nobody does. But we all have to acknowledge the… economics… of the situation." She glanced away from her weapon and back to his eyes, marveling at how quickly he could shrink under her gaze. "You don't open a gambling hall this close to the South Gate without his protection."

She turned away from the quivering mess in the corner and found the lockbox under his desk. A quick strike with her mace took the lock off, and she quickly counted up the gold inside. Satisfied, she snapped the lid shut and turned back to the owner.

"Consider this a late fee. Now that you've settled up, Mr. Stonesoul will be happy to discuss the terms of a protection arrangement for your establishment here. And you'd better avoid any more of these… misunderstandings." She stepped closer, barely leaving the man enough room to breathe. "You've already had your one warning."

On her way back to the Copper Cup a few minutes later, Plim counted the money in the lockbox again. This job wouldn't erase her debt to Glesrik, but it would go a long way. And if luck was with her, she could make up the rest with a round of cards before the night was up.

* * *

Plim clutched her head in her hands, trying to ignore the smug grin of the dwarf sitting across from her. All she could see were the cards on the table in front of her. Glesrik's cards were almost as unbearably smug as his face: the Sun and the Throne, shining gold and red in the smoky light of the Copper Cup's backroom. Her own cards sat so heavy on the table that she was surprised they didn't crash through. The crumbling façade of Ruin, and the piercing gaze of the Fates. The three hags stared back at her with their red pinprick eyes. One with pity. One with severe judgment. And one with an enticing grin and a hand outstretched, as though offering her a way out.

Glesrik let out a long breath, leaned back in his chair, and took a long draft from the fine drinking horn hanging from his belt. "Well, I do believe that's that, then." Plim didn't want to see the satisfaction on his face, but the stares of the Fates were even worse. She tore her eyes from the card and looked up at her opponent. The dwarf reveled in his victory for another silent moment, then relented. "Look, Plimmie. We both know you don't have anywhere near the gold you'd need to pay all this off now. And the protection work you've been doing for me would take a decade to make a dent. Now, I'll happily continue receivin' your exceptional services for however long it takes for you to pay me back – with interest, of course – but I think there's another way we can both come out of this happy."

A desperate hope gripped Plim's gut, bringing with it a fear far more intense than the despair it replaced. It must have shown on her face, because Glesrik chuckled and said "Now, now, don't get too excited. I haven't even finished with the foreplay." He pushed his chair away from the card table and stood, then walked over to the large glass case standing against the nearest wall. "As you may have noticed, I'm a bit of a collector." He waved his hand at the relics on display around the room. Hanging from the walls and packed onto nearly every table and shelf were weapons, armor, jewels, books, scrolls, and a dozen other kinds of knickknacks. "I've got pieces here from all over Faerûn, from every place I ever visited. And the commerce of this wonderful city has allowed me to continue adding to them, even though I left the road behind long ago." He hefted an ornate buckler off the wall and turned to face her, posing with it as though he were fending off an attacker. "I find this stuff fascinating, but the best thing about traveling the world is all the unique people you encounter."

Plim had heard this sentiment before, mostly from sailors and merchants telling stories over a pint. But something about Glesrik's tone when he said it sent a shiver down Plim's spine.

The dwarf hung the shield back on the wall and clapped his hands together. "Here, let me show you what I mean. Cassandra!" In response to his call, the door to the main gambling hall floor opened and a hulking figure ducked through the frame. Plim recognized the massive minotaur who stood guard over Glesrik's games. Just the sight of her was enough to dissuade the patrons from cheating, or from arguing too much when the house cheated instead. The glossy black fur covering her head and shoulders faded to a dark brown fuzz over her heavily scarred skin further down. The gleaming white of her horns, one of which had been severed near the base, stood out starkly in the dim light. She stood with her head held high, her feet shoulder width apart, and her hands clasped behind her back, awaiting instruction.

Glesrik circled the creature, looking her up and down appreciatively. "Ol' Cassie here is from a faraway corner of the Underdark. I was there looking for some lost treasure or other, I forget which one. I'd killed quite a few of these bull folk on my way in, but Cassie met me with a business proposition, isn't that right, girl?"

"Yes, Mr. Stonesoul." Her voice was very deep and surprisingly scratchy. It reminded Plim of some of the captains in the Dale who spent their whole lives shouting themselves hoarse over the winds of Maer Dualdon.

"Ya see," Glesrik continued, "Her people had come down with a nasty plague, the result of eatin' the wrong type of fungus. I'd seen it before, and I also happened to know the cure. And Cassie here said she'd do anything for that information. Isn't that what you said, Cassie?"

"Yes, Mr. Stonesoul."

The dwarf returned to the table and sat back down across from Plim. "See? It's just like I said. I'm a collector, and the best things you'll find when travelling the world are the people." He paused to take another draft from his drinking horn, and Plim realized where Cassandra's missing horn had gone. Her eyes started running over every object in the room, wondering how many pieces in Glesrik's collection had similar origins, and what – who – they had come from. Her eyes settled back on the cards in front of her, Glesrik's personal deck, and her gut twisted as she realized how leathery they were, and how much of that deep red ink had been used in their design.

Glesrik clearly saw the horror spreading across Plim's face, and just as clearly didn't understand its source, as he said "Now, now, don't get like that. I'm not lookin' to duplicate the arrangement me and Cassie have. You don't owe me that much. Not yet, anyway." He chuckled at his own joke, not seeming to care that no one else was amused. "No, all I want from you, Plim, is a wager. One more round of cards. On my side, I'll put up all the money you owe me. If you win, you'll be free and clear for the first time since you walked into my establishment. And if you lose," he ran is eyes hungrily across Plim's torso, her scales that glinted darker than any of her kind, "I'll be taking that fine shell."

Plim was stunned. Somewhere far away, in the back of her mind, a voice was screaming at her to get out. She could live with the debt, work it off. This wasn't worth risking her life for. She didn't even know if she could survive without her shell, let alone the removal itself. She'd seen how Glesrik extracted what he was owed. On many occasions, she'd done the extracting.

But that voice of reason had never been louder than the one telling her to take the bet. It was a risk, but she was a risk taker. All that stood between her and freedom was one game of cards. And she knew this smug bastard couldn't beat her twice.

* * *

The second game was closer than the first. Glesrik's hand was nowhere near unbeatable. But when the cards were down, Plim had lost.

There was a moment of tense silence. Cassandra's heavy, snorting breaths were the loudest sound in the room. Then the tortle, the dwarf, and the minotaur moved simultaneously. Plim bolted to her feet, hefted the mace from her belt, and brought it down on Glesrik's head. But he was too fast. He had already rolled out of his seat, falling to the floor out of her reach. "Cassie, get her secure!" The panic in his voice gave Plim a grim satisfaction.

Cassandra was already moving, lowering her head and charging from where she'd stood behind Glesrik's chair. She grabbed the edge of the heavy card table with both hands and flipped it up without slowing, using the table's surface as a weapon to slam Plim backwards into the wall.

Plim's head cracked back against the wood as she impacted the wall. Her vision flashed white and stayed white for too long. She had lost her mace, and the table was still pressing, crushing. Her head was ringing. She felt her shell creaking at the sides of her torso. It was getting hard to breathe.

"Careful! Don't damage the shell, you dumb cow!" The pressure on Plim's chest lessened in response to the dwarf's frantic cry. The table dropped, landing edge-first on her feet with a sickening crunch. Plim's vision cleared in time to see a massive, furred fist grip her around the throat, preventing her from retreating fully into her shell. The minotaur lifted her easily by the neck, set the table upright with her free hand, and slammed Plim face down on its surface. Her breath would've been knocked out again if she'd been able to breathe in Cassandra's grip.

Glesrik had retrieved some sort of chain and was grabbing at Plim's left wrist. She started thrashing, clawing at him as best she could with a minotaur pinning her to a table. She felt her claws strike flesh and tried to laugh at the dwarf's curse of pain. It came out more as a wheezing gasp.

Glesrik stepped back, examining his wounded forearm, and retrieved a bandage from behind the desk in the corner. "Cassie, a little more secure, please?"

Plim's skull cracked again as the minotaur shifted her position and brought her knee up into Plim's face. Plim blacked out for a moment. She woke to the panicked feeling of suffocation. She gasped for air, but instead her lungs filled with a warm, sticky substance. She coughed violently, sending blood spurting from her mouth and nose, and the pain her head spiked so badly that she immediately vomited on the floor in front of her. She was still on the table, still pinned down by Cassandra's considerable weight, and Glesrik had finished shackling her limbs to the table's legs. His arm was hastily bandaged, and Plim was disappointed to see that it was still attached and functional. He had dragged another table over and was laying out a selection of tools: small paring knives, heavy cleavers, and at least one bone saw. His fingers danced in the air over the tools as he considered each one, then alighted on a long chef's knife, the type meant for chopping large vegetables. He hefted the blade and walked over to stand in front of Plim's aching head.

"Now then," he said tersely, "I'm going to ignore that little outburst. I expect this will hurt you quite a bit, and I don't blame you for giving escape a try, even if we did have a deal." He walked to the corner of the table where her left arm was stretched out by the iron shackle. She could still feel the dwarf's blood dripping from her claws.

"Let's start here, shall we?" he said cheerfully. Pain erupted from deep in Plim's left shoulder, and she screamed.

The dwarf worked quickly and efficiently to separate her shoulder from the surrounding shell. She felt her arm clenching, trying desperately to wrench her wrist free from its shackle, only to relax against her will as a line of white fire cut through the knotted strands of muscle. She could feel pieces of herself coming loose from each other, her skin shifting in ways it shouldn't. The scrape of the knife along the inside of her shell hurt almost as much as the incisions it had made to get there. The claws on her as yet working hand ground uselessly against the iron of her chains until they were blunted and bleeding. The sounds of claw and bone and iron and blood scraped against each other, ringing in her head and amplifying the horror of what she could feel with what she could imagine.

And she screamed. She screamed until she ran out of air, choked on her own blood, then screamed even louder. She screamed until she felt something break in her chest. Her voice caught in her throat, and she coughed up another glob of blood. She kept screaming, though all that would come now was a wet, desperate rattle.

She lay there under the dwarf's blade, feeling it work its way closer to her spine and further down her side to her abdomen. Each slice, each snip, each prying snap made her wish for death, only for the next cut to interrupt her prayer.

Finally, after what felt like days, the dwarf removed his arm from the bloody socket that had once been her left shoulder. He gave her shell an experimental tug, and it shifted in a way it shouldn't, grinding against bone and freshly exposed nerves, setting her whole body alight with fresh pain. Apparently satisfied, he moved to her right arm, and the torture began anew.

Plim had already forgotten how much that first incision had hurt. In the dazed midst of the mind-killing pain on her left side, she half expected the simple pain of a knife in her right shoulder to come as a relief. It did not. Somehow, the pain piled on top of the already infinite burning she felt, her nerves screaming into her brain with the unbearable addition of one more slice.

She had stopped screaming. She didn't know when. She only knew that, every time she tried, her throat closed up and her stomach heaved. She had apparently stopped vomiting too, but only when there was nothing left in her stomach to expel.

A new sensation began to spread through her fingers and toes. A gentle chill, sapping the feeling from her hands and feet, then her legs and what was left of her arms. That faraway voice in her mind was saying something, something about blood and consciousness and death. But this new feeling spreading through her body was so wonderful. It dulled the agony, even as a blade worked its way between her shell and her spinal column, carefully separating the two without breaking the path of her pain. The chill gave her relief. It slowly turned to a peaceful warmth, and it felt like home.

She was floating in Maer Dualdon, in Icewind Dale. Father had warned her not to swim at night. He'd said the water was colder than ice, and only the wind on its surface kept it from freezing over. But the moon's reflection on the lake had been so beautiful, and she had wanted to be a part of that beauty for just a moment. It was so easy not to notice the loss of feeling when her limbs felt less cold now than they had a minute ago. It was so easy to ignore that voice on the shore, yelling at her to come back, to stay awake, to keep fighting. Fighting what? It was so peaceful here, floating in the moonlight. She was vaguely aware of someone or something jostling her, a grip on the back of her shell, pulling her back to shore.

Her eyes snapped open and she found strength in her body for one last animalistic scream as the hand kept pulling, and her shell peeled away from her body, leaving behind a butchered mess of blood and bone. She choked again, the blood that filled her mouth rushing down her throat as she gasped for air. She convulsed once, twice, and then was still.

* * *

Plim couldn't breathe. Her throat was clear, she could feel cool air on her face, and her diaphragm was spasming desperately, trying to suck in a breath, but her lungs wouldn't fill. She felt something press hard on either side of her chest, sending lances of pain arcing across her torso, but suddenly her lungs expanded, and she took in a delicious gasp of air.

The pressure on her chest lessened as her breathing calmed, and she drifted off again.

* * *

There was something warm pressed against Plim's lips, and something cool pressed against her forehead. "Drink. You need to keep up your strength." The voice was muffled, like there was a thick layer of wool between its source and Plim's ears. She opened her mouth a fraction of an inch, and even that movement set her skull throbbing. A thin trickle poured down her throat. It was warm, and it tasted bitter, like the herbs her mother had used to treat hypothermia. She'd always hated that taste, but she knew better than to complain when it was her fault she needed them. She shouldn't have stayed in the water so long.

After a long while, the trickle stopped, and the warm thing pressing against her lips disappeared. "I'm sorry, Mother," she tried to say, but her voice caught on thick phlegm and set her coughing. The pounding in her skull intensified, spiking unbearably with the pressure of each cough.

A hand, smaller than she remembered, pressed gently on her chest, and there was something wrong with how that felt, but she couldn't focus long enough to figure out what that was. "Shhhhhh…" The voice gently coaxed her back to silence. "Sleep now. I'll bring you some water soon."

Yes. Sleep. That was all she needed. She'd be back at work on Father's boat tomorrow. She just needed to sleep.

* * *

Plim first became aware of a powerful ache suffusing her entire body. Every part of her hurt in a dull, blunt way that made it hard to tell if there was an underlying wound. She cracked her eyes open, and the light stabbed painfully at her retinas. She winced, hissing with the sudden pain in her skull, then slowly opened her eyes again.

Her eyes were blurred with mucous, and she set to slowly blinking them clear. The scene before her coalesced into a wooden wall. A stone fireplace stood against the wall, with its chimney extending off to the right past the edge of her vision. A cheery fire burned in the hearth, its flames also stretching from left to right, instead of bottom to top. It took her a long moment to piece together that she was lying on her side in some sort of bed, and that the chimney was actually the right way up.

She groaned and pushed herself slowly into a sitting position, propping her back against the wood of the headboard behind her.

No. That was a mistake. Pain lanced up the length of her spine from her pelvis to her skull. It felt like someone had gripped her by the spinal column and yanked. She curled forward, groaning weakly with pain and effort. Eventually, she raised her head to take in the rest of the room, and found someone looking back at her. Sitting in a heavily cushioned wooden rocking chair across the small room was an old halfling woman, blinking in mild surprise at Plim with warm brown eyes. She smiled and said "Ah! You're finally awake. It was touch and go for a while there, but by our Lady's grace, you pulled through." She hopped down from her chair and busied herself filling a bowl with soup from the cauldron hanging over the fire.

Plim blinked a few more times, hoping her vision would clear again and she'd see something she could make sense of. "I… I'm sorry, who are you? Where am I?" Her voice croaked horribly when she spoke, and it took a couple of tries to get the first word out past the phlegm in her throat.

The older woman hurried over with a spring in her step and pressed the soup bowl into Plim's hands. "I'm Sister Rosmia Greenbottle, and this is my home! My sisters and I brought you here after I found you in that alley off of Smuggler's Run, down by the South Gate. Your injuries were extreme, and we thought you might be beyond our help, but a little magic goes a long way, it seems!"

Sister Rosmia's cheery demeanor was extremely at odds with the subject she was describing, and even more so with the memories that just then came flashing back to Plim's mind. She frantically tore the blankets off of her body, sending the bowl clattering to the floor, spilling its contents halfway across the room. She stared in numb horror at her bandage-wrapped torso. Her shoulders and hips were completely covered with a mess of angry pink lines, the smallest of which had already healed into knotted white scars. Her chest was held tightly together by a binding of white linen. She could feel her lungs press against it the same way she was used to her shell putting pressure on her when she breathed. And her shell was gone.

Sister Rosmia ignored the spilled soup and reached up to cup Plim's face in her hands. She tilted Plim's chin up, forcing her eyes away from her injuries and back to Rosmia's warm, smiling face. "I know this is quite a shock, little one. But the worst of it is behind you. You've had quite a bit of good fortune to recover as well as you did."

Plim's mind, still numb with shock, latched onto something entirely inconsequential. Here was a Sister, endowed with divine magic, crediting a miracle to chance rather than a god. She turned this over slowly in her mind, trying to think over the dull scream reverberating through her brain. "Which god did you say you serve again?"

Rosmia smiled even wider and said proudly "I serve my Lady Tymora, the goddess of good fortune, known to most as Lady Luck. And you," she tapped Plim gently on the nose, "might just be the luckiest soul alive."


End file.
